Motorola Starts Lawsuit against Microsoft Again

A week after Windows Phone 7 was release, Microsoft is still on the lips of journalists and IT professionals. The reason for today’s noise is the fact that Micosoft sued Motorola on patent-infringement gounds.

The root of the legal scandal were set up last week. When Motorola firstly accused Micosoft for using 16 of its patents in different hardware such as PCs, laptops, smartphone and Xbox without their permision. These softwares architectures using Motorola’s patents are suposed to be part of applications such as Exchange, Messenger, Outlook and other object oriented software.

The incriminated party’s reply with a lawsuit against the mobile manufacturer, claiming that Motorola had previously broke license agreements, asking for excessive and discriminatory (Microsoft) royalties for patents of the H-264 video compression and LAN. Moreover, Kirk Dailey, the vice president of Motorola Mobility commented that “Motorola’s R&D and intellectual property are of great importance to the company and are renowned worldwide.”

Because Motorola is part of the IEEE and ITU agreement, certain licences, such as H-264 and Wi (802.11) are supposed to be priced undiscriminatory and fair. Motorola’s official position for this reason is that the company has offered Microsoft with a good price, but the hi-tech giant turned in down. Microsoft’s legat attempt might conduct to some changes in the pricing of the mentioned patents and also for a deal regarding the payment back of the„unfair fees.

The Microsoft’s strugle can be commented by the company’s attempt to save the image of the newly released Windows Phone 7 and for diminishing the cost for using technologies, in the eventuality of a large market demand for the smartphone.

The scenary is repeating after less than a month ago Microsoft proceeded against Motorola again because the company’s Android running device was infringing certain handset OS patents. Moreover, another scandal was developed around Xbox games console, Microsoft asking for decent pricing of the patents.

Also in the news headlines it was announced that Motorola is intending to split into two, leading to the creation of Motorola Mobility, which will focus on selling mobile and television devices, while Motorola Solutions will be in charge with selling wireless solutions to goverment’s institutions and B2B. This shift is likely to be produced in the first quarter of 2011.